Olympic Opening Ceremony Facts -- Need Info Fast!

The Game Room
#1

The weekly pub triva has their “current events” round, and if you’re happen to subscribe to their facebook page, you get a little hint as to what a few of them may be about . This week:

“…all 10 questions be about the 2012 Summer Olympics Opening Ceremony. Hope you studied it like the Zapruder film, buddy.”

Ok…I was at a BBQ while that was on, but I caught a little of it (well, pretty much just Vangellis/Rowan Atkinson, and I saw J.K. Rowling doing some reading, a giant Voldemort and a few Alice In Wonderland characters).

So, quick – game starts at 8:00 Eastern – what Q’s & A’a might we expect tonight? What do you think would be key pieces of trivia stemming from the opening ceremonies?
And as much as I love good joke answers, I’d appreciate it if they could wait until after the game gets underway…

#2

Well, here’s the Wiki entry on it. Reading through that may help you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Summer_Olympics_opening_ceremony

#3

Yes, there were sheep.

#4

Kenneth Branner as Isambard Kingdom Brunel?

#5

Oh, the NHS sequence focussed on Great Ormond Street Hospital (for sick children) which receives the royalties from Peter Pan - hence the link to j k Rowling’s reading.

#6

The name of the woman who crashed the Indian entry in the opening ceremony is Madhura Nagendra from Bangalore.

#7

Tim Berners Lee tweeted “This is for everyone” during the ceremony (spelled out in LCD lights in the audience).

#8

The couple in the musical montage were named Frankie and June. Dizzee Rascal sang live.

Mike Oldfield played Tubular Bells during the NHS sequence, Rowan Atkinson played synth keyboard during the Chariots of Fire sequence, the Arctic Monkeys played “Come Together” while giant pigeons on bicycles cycled around, and Paul McCartney had the last word with “Hey Jude” AGAIN.

#9

Kenneth Brannagh quoted Caliban from The Tempest at the beginning.

There were 204 nations in the parade of nations.

The “Former Yugolav Republic of Macedonia” marched with the Fs for “Former” because of a dispute with Greece over the use of the name “Macedonia”.

#10

We went nine-of-ten in the Current Events round, six of which were directly a result of my having printed the entire Wikipedia entry and spending the drive to the game studying it.

We won a close second place, earning a $15 gift card for our table of six. So basically, your suggestion got me one free beer. For that, I’m eternally in your debt.
FTR, the one we missed was “How much was Sir Paul McCartney paid for his performance?”

We guessed “nothing”, the answer was “one pound”.

#11

He was overpaid.

#12

English law surrounding consideration, I’m afraid.

Too late for your quiz, but a decent question might have been: There are three athletes competing under the Olympic flag, rather than a national one. From what two countries/territories are they from?

#13

Can only take a wild guess at one: South Sudan? It strikes me that it might be too new a country to have actually organised Olympic participation. Beyond that, I got nothin’.

#14

They did ask that, but backward – what flag did they enter under?

#15

So, was my guess correct? :smiley:

#16

3 of the atheletes that are under “Idependant Olympic Atheletes” are from Netherlands Antilles, which was disolved and lost its IOC membership. The fouth, as mentioned above, is from South Sudan which doesn’t have a NOC yet (and the athelete refused to be part of the Sudan team) (he did not march in the opening cermeonies)

Brian